Over the past century, business cards have formed part of business ritual. Functionally, they serve as a record of an encounter, and provide details of how the giver may be contacted (address, phone, e-mail, etc.).
Essentially, business cards have not changed in response to the advent of computers. Some accommodation has been made for business cards on the computer side, in the form of specialized scanner and optical character recognition (OCR) tools, by which textual data printed on cards can be read and entered into personal productivity software tools (e.g. contact managers, address books, datebooks, personal information managers, etc.). However, the data transferred into the personal productivity software is static and unchanging.
In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, the graphical, background and/or textual information on a business card are supplemented with steganographically-encoded, multi-bit binary data. When presented to a compliant sensing computer or device, the card serves as an associated link to access further, related information. The information may be maintained in an on-line database at an internet site. Through the database, the recipient of the card may gain access to information that changes over time (e.g., contact information, personal data, job title, etc.).
The foregoing and additional features and advantages of the present invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.